Around this time of year, many middle schools begin to prepare for a fall student-led conference. This conference serves as a valuable tool for getting to know your students and connecting with their families. It can be a truly memorable experience, but it takes work, too. We have gathered some of our most important resources to support you and your students. Enjoy this updated Student-Led Conferences Toolkit. (You can also find it in its permanent location here.)

Student-Led Conferences

A student-led conference (or SLC) can be a magical opportunity for teachers to engage deeply with a student and their family. It typically involves a middle schooler gathering some evidence of their learning, strengths and challenges, and possibly their goals and aspirations. They assemble that evidence along with reflections into some format; many use a slideshow or PLP, but there are many possible ways – even papers in a binder or journal! Then, the teacher helps facilitate a conversation and sharing process between student, family, and teacher. Many factors help determine its success. Here are some of our favorite resources to help you.

Why Student-Led Conferences are Important

• The student-led conference as celebration
• Making pandemic student-led conferences work

How to Prepare Families for SLCs

• The Parent’s Role in an SLC
  • A description of the difference between an SLC and a traditional parent-teacher conference that gives tips to parents for making it a success.
• How to Design Pre-Conference Conversations with Families
  • This post also focuses on how to prepare families. It contains talking points for teachers around the purpose and many other resources.

Examples of Student-Led Conference Implementation

• Student-led conferences come to Leland & Gray
  • Describes how-to do the SLC process, including examples, communication and feedback tools.
• Successful student-led conferences
  • Also describes the process and how-to, includes sample agenda and student template.
• 4 shifts for student-led conferences in a proficiency-based environment
  • This post also focuses on how-to do SLCs, but specifically while in a proficiency-based environment.
• Video evidence & reflection for student-led conference
  •  A story from a school that used screencasting as a tool for using video evidence and reflection in an SLC.
• How to Evaluate Student Led Conferences
  • This post focuses on how to collect feedback and reflections from students, families and teachers to improve the SLC process.

We would love to hear how you found these resources useful for your Student-Led Conferences.

• What tools did you use and how was it implemented?
• What did students find engaging about the process?
• Do you have other resources and tools to share with us?

Please share and connect with us! Hope your SLC’s are a success!